Shortly after the birth of her fourth child, Tracey Gairns Brioux decided the best thing she could with her career would be to teach an online fitness class at 5:30 am each day.

She launched her company Reset Breathe Fitness, whose cornerstone is the 30-minute class she leads every morning at 5:30 Atlantic time from her home on Prince Edward Island.  Gairns Brioux uses Facebook Live to broadcast the classes, so subscribers can join the class live or view them later in the day.

The story of Reset Breathe highlights the determination of Gairns Brioux herself, but it’s also an interesting case study in online, low-budget marketing. Her marketing channels have been Facebook, Instagram and direct email, and with these common tools she’s built up her paid subscriber list to 200, doubling it between Years 1 and 2.

“What I’ve learned since I started was the importance of community,” Gairns Brioux said in a recent interview in Halifax, where she was attending the Atlantic Venture Forum. “People can communicate on the Facebook Page or post pictures and that really helps.”

Gairns Brioux had been working as a fitness instructor for a decade when her fourth child arrived, but the challenges of managing four kids under the ages of 10 (the oldest today is nine years old) made it impossible to teach classes at the gym.

Her solution to the problem was to lead a 30-minute course on Facebook Live. Most of her clients live in Atlantic Canada, which means many are able to be awake early enough to join her live. She said about a quarter of her 200 subscribers join her each day in the wee hours for the live broadcast and the rest watch it through the day.

Her marketing includes a lot of Facebook and Instagram posts not just about fitness but also about herself, her family and life on P.E.I. She wants subscribers to know who she is and what she believes in, so they can be part of the Reset Breathe community. And her central message is that the health benefits of fitness are more important than appearance. Facebook, she said, is an ideal platform because of its ability to build a community, allowing subscribers to post their own content.

“What’s good about Reset is the lack of polish – people can relate to it,” she said. “There’s too much focus [elsewhere] on how you look and it’s really more about feeling good and being healthy.  My focus is not, ‘How am I going to look at the beach this summer?’ but, ‘How am I going to feel when I’m playing with my kids?’”

Gairns Brioux is now working out how to grow the company, debating such topics as whether to seek outside investment. She would like to build up a team, but wants to preserve Reset Breathe’s personal relationship with its subscribers. And she wants the company to continue in its central mission of helping people improve their health.

“What’s always on my mind is that I don’t want to lose our sense of community,” said Gairns Brioux.  “But having a bigger company may also mean that you have more support around you.”